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Personal Convictions
Making Decisions as a Group
As a consensus-oriented meeting process facilitator, one of the paradoxes that has to be dealt with in any group decision-making process is that of our individual convictions. They are a necessary roadblock in addressing the complexity of groups making decisions especially when you are dealing with a topic that has divided a group.
Convictions are your beliefs, thoughts, ideas, values, and perspectives. They impact group decision-making in multiple ways. They create separation, they create connection, they can obstruct the groups’ ability to come together, they can cause groups’ to prematurely come to resolutions on the topic that they are making a decision about. But, groups need all of these things to resolve their situation.
Often disagreement between our convictions is one of the key components in any disagreement. This disagreement can often cause a group of people to hit what seems like an impassable roadblock. Many groups use majority rule to get past this roadblock. If you only need 50% plus 1 to pass a motion then you can ignore the convictions of the other 49%. This is problematic for organizations because you then have two common occurrences — people leave because they don’t agree with the direction the organization is going or they stick around but start playing politics, building their 50% plus one…
